Pitchfork

I first saw Titus Andronicus on the third floor of a Durham music venue normally reserved for goth and electro throwdowns. It was June and it was hot, the sort of North Carolina night where you hope sweat is sexy because, really, that's all you've got. Titus hit the stage at 9:00 p.m., already pretty drunk and snappy. Like the Hold Steady sans two decades, the five members took half-can hits of beer every time they could get a hand off of an instrument. Frontman Patrick Stickles was falling all over his keyboard two furious takes in, belligerently puffing on a cigar as he played one-hand piano.

Still, they hit every mark, nailing noise and debris against shake-and-sing anthems. That's Titus Andronicus' ploy-- aggressing and endearing audiences as a completely ramshackle crew of Jersey drunks, while somehow triumphing through perfectly clangorous pop songs. On "Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, New Jersey", the B-side to their excellent debut seven-inch, Stickles' Spencer Krug-ian vocals sound like they were recorded in a tin can corroded with acid. That's fitting, too, as he ends his guitar-and-voice first verse telling some chump, "When the shit hits the fan/ I just hope you will not be spared." Together, the kids scream "Fuck you!" and rip into it, drunk bastards crashing the stage at their high school prom.

And maybe they could convince us they were really too far gone to have a clue if "Fear and Loathing" forgot its last half, a perfectly complicated two-minute coda that climbs a train-track rhythm section from a finger-tapped solo up into bold brass swells. If this band can convince itself not to fall apart at the well-lubed, beer-soaked seams, watch out.